COMPLIANCE WITH THE ESI ORDER IS A MUST: Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Discovery Responses Granted

In State of Arizona, ex rel. Kristin K. Mayes, Attorney General; et al. v. Michael D. Lansky, L.L.C., dba Avid Telecom; et al., 2026 WL 1733004, the court granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel to produce documents holding that Defendants’ disclosure must comply with the court’s Electronically Stored Information (ESI) order in that they must be disclosed in native format with parent-child associated documents, among other things, and must indicate the request to which each document pertains. The court pointed out that Defendants must either produce documents or provide supplemental responses explaining why they have not done so.

Background.

The Article “WHERE ARE WE HEADED?: That Time 49 States Filed a 245 Trillion Dollar Lawsuit Against a Telecom Carrier and the Case Really Didn’t Go Anywhere… – TCPAWorld” published by “Czar” last year, outlines this absolutely extraordinary lawsuit filed in 48 states and the District Columbia against Defendants Michael D. Lansky and Stacey S. Reeves of Avid Telecom. The lawsuit focuses on the barrage of unwanted robocalls sent to millions of American consumers and seeking hundreds of trillions of dollars in penalties.

At the discovery stage, Plaintiffs served Requests for Production. The parties agreed to extend the deadline for Defendants to respond. However, Defendants did not comply. After a few more Plaintiffs’ unsuccessful attempts to obtain documents, the court got involved and ordered the parties to participate in meet and confer. However, even after a couple of meet and confer efforts, the production was still deficient, and Plaintiffs filed the motion to produce documents.

In the pending motion Plaintiffs asked the court to order Defendant Stacey S. Reeves to provide “documents that she has failed to produce and/or not logged correctly under the Court’s ESI Order”. In its reply to the motion, Defendant argued that Plaintiffs’ motion was not supported by “good cause,” however, the court stated that the good cause is not required to bring a motion to compel discovery.

Notably, the court agreed with Defendant Reeves that she cannot be compelled to disclose documents that she does not have. But assuming she has conducted a search and found nothing, she is still required to serve a response stating as much.

In sum, the court’s ruling reinforces that Defendants must adhere strictly to the ESI order by producing documents in native format with proper parent-child associations and clear request references, or else provide adequate explanations for any non-production.